Discover how cutting-edge 3D visualization technology is bringing the promise of clean, abundant, and safe nuclear fusion energy to life, offering scientists and the public a unique window into this complex process.
Delving into the Mysteries of Fusion Reactors
Nuclear fusion — the reaction that fuels the sun and stars — has for decades been a clean, new source of energy. Fusion, in contrast to the traditional fission of heavy atoms, combines light nuclei and releases huge amounts of energy.
Yet to harness controlled fusion reactions, scientists need enormous, elaborate reactors known as tokamaks. Inside these giant rings are some large magnets that generate magnetic field so the atomic particles can turn over and dance, crash, ultimately fusion.
Visualization is key to helping both scientists and the general public grasp this complex process. A new research project out of EPFL’s Laboratory for Experimental Museology (EM+) allows us to step inside a tokamak with a level of detail and awe that can hopefully spark the enthusiasm in everyone.
Bringing Fusion to Life in 3D
The 3D visualization that the company EM+ has developed is a brilliant piece of technology, providing a vivid snapshot of EPFL’s experimental tokamak reactor (TCV) down to the smallest details.
Researchers utilized a robot to map the inside of TCV with a resolution similar to that of computed tomography (CT), as seen in hospitals, so as to build an intricate 3D model of the facility running for over thirty years. This model also contains details of the interior down to the texture on walls coated in tiles reminiscent of graphite, which is able to deal with temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius during its test runs.
However, the real power of this approach comes when the researchers plug in the complicated equations that describe how quantum particles are moving around inside the reactor. This system processes the calculations in real-time to create a dynamic simulation of the way fusion works — and you can almost see it moving with electrons, protons, magnetic fields all bouncing around.
For this level of precision and responsiveness, the EM+ team runs a monster setup with 5 computers running 2 GPUs each to bear the tremendous computational burden. The result is a panoramic display that would compete with any gaming experience, throwing people into the middle of the fusion reactor.
Conclusion
The 3D visual simulation of the tokamak replicator will not only transport the public to a future with cheap, safe energy supply and inexhaustible resources, but will also provide scientists in laboratory unprecedented means for harnessing nuclear fusion spent on scale. Having made the complicated physics of this process simple and manipulable, EM+ researchers are opening up the frontier of what can be understood which moves too fast to see and leading us that much closer to a sky full of energy from the same source as the stars around it.
